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Hunting With Dad
Hunting trips with my father were not filled with fond memories and joyful experiences. I dreaded them. They were among the few times I didn't have to fear my father's drunken wrath, but I dreaded them nevertheless. He started taking me out to hunt when I was five years old. During his few sober moments he'd come to me with a big grin on his face and ask if I wanted to go hunting. I always said yes, though I really wished he would just go alone and leave me at home with Mom. The thing was, half the time we were going out to shoot things we weren't supposed to. My father was the type who believed hunting laws were the work of petty tyrannical bureaucrats and violating them at every opportunity was his own way of rebelling against the system. Any animal, any age, any weapon, any method, any time of year, any time of day or night, it was all fair game. Baiting, trespassing, spotlighting—it was as if legitimate hunts bored him, for rare was it that we would hunt without breaking at least a couple rules. Even at a young age I knew we were breaking the law, because he always told me to keep a look out for the game warden and be careful that no one saw what we were doing. My father didn't like police period, but the warden was his arch-enemy. Father was very enthusiastic in initiating me into his little hunting rebellion way of life. As soon as I could shoot straight, he would indicate illicit game for me to practice on. One of my first kills was a red-tailed hawk. It was sitting atop a utility pole, and I really didn't want to shoot it. But, knowing I could face a beating for disobeying Father, I delicately aimed the pellet gun and easily shot it from 20 yards down the easement. He was very proud of me, and had the bird stuffed, putting it in my room as a trophy. Another time, he took me out at night to hunt owls. He could expertly imitate the calls of several species, and called a great horned owl in to a tree in the middle of a field, where he promptly shot it, fearing I would miss in the darkness. You see, birds were a favorite for him, particularly raptors. I suspect he took some kind of perverse pride in hunting the apex predators. As I started to approach adolescence, he let me do more fun activities on my own, so I didn't have to come on his hunting trips as often. If he was hunting something large like a bear he would bring me along to help out with the sheer amount of work such things took, but for the most part he'd just tell mom and me he was heading out and then come back with something he shot illegally. Then one day he brought back a bald eagle. I don't know where he shot it, in fact I had never previously seen one in person, but there it was. At the time, bald eagles were still very endangered and I knew he would be in a lot of trouble if caught with it. He told me to wrap it up in a towel and take it out of his pickup truck and put the bird on the picnic table behind the house on our small acreage. He must have known even the seediest of taxidermists wouldn't take an eagle, since he set about trying to perform his own amateur stuffing job. I placed the carcass on the picnic table while Father got his tools ready. I'd seen plenty of dead animals before, but I felt genuinely sick as I looked down on it with its closed eyes. The bullet wound was right where the heart would be. Despite my father's contempt of hunting ethics, there was still one scruple he held onto and taught to me: cause the animal as little suffering as possible. I really didn't want it on display in our house, but Father was clearly very proud of his kill, and he enthusiastically set to work on it, bidding that I watch and learn. He ended up making a bloody mess of the thing. By the time he realized he was in over his head with the job, the bird was well beyond salvaging for display purposes. He decided to settle for keeping the beak and talons and some of the feathers. He had to get rid of the rest, being incriminating evidence and all. He probably could have just thrown it in the woods behind our house and let the animals consume it overnight. But just to be safe, he put the mutilated carcass under an upturned metal swimming pool, one of the several disused items we had scattered about our property. That experience left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. I had nightmares about the eagle. I imagined it still alive, blind and in terrible pain, struggling beneath the pool. Between a few days and a month later, two police officers showed up to our property. I had an instant sinking feeling. As much as I feared Father, I didn't want him taken to jail. Plus, Mom and I were also complicit in his hunting crimes. What would happen to us? I didn't know what the penalty was for killing an eagle at the time, but this was during the early 1980s, not long after the passage of the Endangered Species Act and during a time of intense conservation activism. I knew the world would not be happy with our family if we were caught with it, and beneath my fear was shame. Father made sure they never came wandering around where the pool was. They asked him some questions that I couldn't hear, and left. They never came back, and gradually my fear subsided. But I still felt bad about the eagle's fate. I left home as soon as I turned 18. I spent a couple years in the Navy, met a girl, got married, and the whole time I never talked to my parents again They're both dead now. Father died of a heart attack, and Mom from overdosing. I did not attend their funerals. The house was left abandoned. My parents didn't have a will, and I never cared to press matters of inheritance. My wife and I were doing fine on our own. However, I eventually realized someone could start doing something on the derelict property in order to set up an adverse possession claim, so I decided I may was well see if I could fix up the place and claim ownership. I had a lot to think about during the three hour road trip to my childhood home. I felt guilty for leaving Mom alone with my drunk of a father. I felt guilty for keeping out of touch, but I also felt angry that they had never tried to contact me either. I almost turned back on the easement as the house came into view. There were no signs that it had been occupied in the over ten years since they had died. The door was not locked. I had brought my pistol just in case, but there was no one inside. Everything was still there, from the furniture to Mom's decorative knick-knacks, all covered in dust. The only exception was my bedroom. I had taken most of my stuff with me when I moved out. Only my bed and a few items I didn't want remained. Among these was the stuff hawk, still perched awkwardly in my closet, now looking rather disheveled. I would have to get rid of it if I decided to claim the house. I thought about the eagle. I had never looked under the pool after Father put it there. I had been too disgusted and afraid of what I might see. I decided to go and look. It would be some form of closure. The pool was still there, overturned as always. There would not be a horrible mangled creature there anymore, just some bones and maybe some feathers at most, though I doubted even that. I was still somewhat nervous as I lifted the pool. Just the sight of it gave had given me pangs of dread as a teenager. I don't know if whatever was left of the eagle was still under there. I don't know if I saw it and have forgotten, or if it was completely gone. All I know is I was not expecting to find a human cadaver. I think the body had undergone some kind of half-mummification under the pool. It still had skin and hair, but I don't remember a strong stench. He had been dead a while. It was not a pretty sight to be sure. There were a thousand questions a second racing through my brain. But what really haunted me, what made me put the pool back and turn around and drive home and never speak a word of the trip to anyone, was a small metal object on the body's tattered clothing: a game warden's badge.